Hickenlooper: Colorado tough for Obama

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper predicted that President Barack Obama will have to fight hard to keep his state in the Democratic column in 2012, four years after Obama thumped John McCain there by a 9-point margin.

Asked whether Obama would hold Colorado if the election were held today, Hickenlooper said: ““It depends on who his opponent was. I think it’d be a very close battle. He’d have a hard time.”

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“There’s such dissatisfaction over people who have been out of work, not just for a few months but for a year and a half or two years,” said Hickenlooper, a Democrat, who spoke to POLITICO at the National Governors Association meeting in Salt Lake City.

Colorado is one of several states that have tended to vote Republican in presidential elections that Obama flipped to the Democratic column in 2008. The Obama campaign has signaled that keeping Colorado in the Democratic column – along with emerging swing states of Virginia and North Carolina – is a top priority for 2012.

Hickenlooper, a former Denver mayor and restaurateur elected governor by a wide margin in 2010, suggested the administration could benefit politically if it gave state governments more room to experiment with big-picture policy solutions.

He suggested that Obama “could win over a lot of governors and a lot of states by providing some more flexibility in those places where he has flexibility, such as No Child Left Behind,” loans for unemployment insurance and implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

On health care, he praised Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for being open so far to “working with those states that are committed to obtaining the goals laid out in the Affordable Care Act,” to tailor state-specific policies to expand access to health care and lower costs.